An alternately touching and shocking narrative of a dysfunctional yet resilient Mexican American family.
A poignant homage to the author’s Indigenous grandmother as well as an exploration of deep-seated family abuse.
González, a professor of English and creative writing and the author of numerous books of poetry and the acclaimed memoir What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth, recalls his early upbringing in Michoacán, among his extended family, and “the government housing I grew up in, the Fred Young Farm Labor Camp—or El Campo, as it was commonly known.” Because his mother died when the author was 12 and his alcoholic father abandoned him and his brother, Alex, he was raised largely by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother, María Carrillo, who died in 2011, was not “the typical Mexican grandmother.” Rather, he writes, she was “one of a kind—a woman who challenged the depictions of those matronly, domestic older ladies we watched on Mexican telenovelas, las abuelitas.” María, a Purépecha, worked hard in the grape fields well into her old age while at the same time enduring physical abuse by her brutish husband. As González recounts, it’s also likely she had been sexually abused as a child, as had many girls and boys in the author’s extended family. The U.S.–born author was one of the many boisterous grandchildren and cousins who came to inhabit his grandparents’ house, largely for economic reasons. Sleeping on floors and sharing small spaces, González became prey to older cousins and uncles who sexually abused him. Only later in life, now a successful, independent gay man, did he hear from his female cousins that the abuse he suffered also happened to them. The narrative moves in thematic segments, gradually revealing a tender kinship between the hard-shelled abuela and the empathetic author—a precious connection amid a family scarred by domestic violence and intergenerational poverty.
An alternately touching and shocking narrative of a dysfunctional yet resilient Mexican American family.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-299-33760-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Univ. of Wisconsin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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